How to create your company’s Maximum leave booking period policy

The Maximum leave booking period policy controls how far into the future employees and approvers can request leave in Leave Dates.

For example, you might allow employees to book annual leave up to 12 months in advance, while allowing some types of leave to be booked further ahead or without a future booking limit.

The Maximum leave booking period policy is different from the Maximum leave request policy. Maximum leave booking period controls how far into the future a request can be made, while Maximum leave request controls how much continuous leave can be requested at one time.

This policy is useful when your organisation wants to control how early future leave can be booked while still allowing employees to plan their time off.

Feature availability: With our Plus plan, you have full policy editing rights, enabling you to create your own personalised maximum leave booking period policy with different rules for each leave type; on the Essential plan, you are able to edit the default policy, which will then be applied to all leave types; on the Starter plan, you cannot edit any of the policy settings (these are configured to the Leave Dates system default) but you can still view all the policies to understand what rules are being applied.

Open the Maximum leave booking period policy

To view or change this policy:

Go to Settings.
Select Policies.
Select Maximum leave booking period.

The policy opens on the Details tab.

Understand the system default booking period

The Leave Dates system default setting is Unlimited for both employees and approvers. This means that there are no limits on how far into the future any leave type can be requested.

You can replace the unlimited setting with a specific period when you want to restrict how far ahead leave can be booked.

Why would you set a maximum?

A company may want to limit advance bookings for several operational reasons, such as:

keeping future planning manageable;
avoiding very early bookings that may need to be changed later;
allowing managers to plan staffing based on a defined window;
treating different leave types differently;
ensuring that future leave is booked within the period used by the organisation for workforce planning.

The exact booking window is a company policy decision and can be configured in Leave Dates.

Set a default maximum booking period

From the Details tab, you can change the default setting from Unlimited to a defined period and automatically apply this to all leave types.

For example, you could set your policy so that:

Employees can book leave up to 12 months in the future.
Approvers can book leave for their direct reports up to 24 months in the future.

To do this:

Under Employees, untick the Unlimited box.
Enter 12 for the required notice period in total months.
Under Approvers, untick the Unlimited box.
Enter 24 for the required notice period in total months.
Review the settings for each leave type.
Select Save changes.
This new company default policy will now be applied to all leave types which have the Use default active.

We recommend giving employees the most restrictive permissions, with progressively greater permissions for approvers and admins. If you configure employees with higher permissions than approvers, you’ll get a warning message because the Leave Dates system will know this is likely to cause issues. There are no restrictions for admins so they will always be able to make exceptions.

Set different booking periods for different leave types

You do not necessarily need to apply the same booking period to every leave type.

The Details tab allows individual leave types to either Use default or have their own maximum booking period.

This allows you to create a company-wide default while making exceptions where necessary.

All leave types are automatically set to use the company default initially. So if a particular leave type should have a different booking period:

Find the leave type.
Turn off Use default by unticking the box.
Enter the required maximum period in total months.
Check whether the setting applies to employees, approvers, or both.
Select Save changes.

Leave Dates automatically switches a leave type back to Use default when its configuration matches the company default. This can happen when you manually change the settings for a leave type, but the settings you’ve chosen actually match the default. Or if you change the default settings and they now match changes you previously made to individual leave types. This prevents unnecessary duplicate configurations and keeps genuine exceptions clear.

Review policy changes

The Updates tab provides a full audit trail of changes made to the maximum leave booking period policy. Every change is recorded as an event in the timeline, with no exceptions. Events are never deleted or modified, so you can always see the history of how the policy has changed.

The most recent changes appear at the top. For each event, you can see When the change was made, Who made it, and What policy settings were changed. By comparing the Before and After columns, you can see exactly how the rules were updated.

If the user who made a change is later deleted from Leave Dates, their name may appear as “(Deleted)”, but the event itself remains in the audit trail.

For example, the screenshot shows historical changes where:

Dependent Leave was changed from unlimited future booking to 2 months;
Study Leave / Training was changed to 18 months;
Annual Leave was changed to 1 month.

This makes the Updates tab useful when reviewing why a particular booking restriction is currently in place.

Test your maximum leave booking period policy

Before saving your Maximum leave booking period policy, use the Test tab to check that your rules work as intended. This helps you identify and correct any issues before the changes affect employees.

The test tool lets you select a future date and check whether leave can be booked for that date under your current policy settings. It is much faster (and cleaner) than manually creating and cancelling leave requests through the Wallchart.

To test your policy:

Open Settings > Policies > Maximum leave booking period.
Select the Test tab.
Select the future date you want to check.
Review the results for the different leave types.
Check the Employees and Approvers columns to see how the policy applies to each role.
Review the Allowed and Not allowed indicators to confirm whether leave can be booked for the selected date.

If the results are not as expected, return to the policy settings, make the necessary changes, and test again before saving.

Testing your policy before saving helps you confirm that your rules work as intended before they are implemented for all users.

What happens when an employee tries to book too far ahead?

When a requested date falls outside the maximum booking period configured for the relevant employee, approver or leave type, the request is subject to the maximum booking period rule and won’t be permitted. The individual requesting the leave will receive an error message indicating why they cannot submit the request.

Remember that this is only one of the rules that can affect a leave request. A request can also be affected by other company settings, such as:

leave allowance and remaining balance;
maximum continuous leave request;
leave request notice period;
leave limits for the company or department;
the employee's employment period.

For example, Leave Dates also prevents leave requests from being made beyond an employee's recorded employment end date.

Maximum booking period and leave allowances

The maximum booking period does not determine how much leave an employee is entitled to.

Leave allowances determine how much leave an employee can take, while the maximum booking period determines how far ahead they can request it.

Leave Dates calculates an employee's available leave from their configured allowance policies, including applicable carry-over and TOIL.

For example, an employee could have 25 days available for the year but still be unable to book a date 10 months in advance if the company's maximum booking period for that leave type is six months.

Reset the policy to the system default

If you no longer want to use your customised maximum booking periods, you can return the policy to its system default.

The policy interface includes Reset to system default at the bottom of the policy window.

The default configuration is Unlimited for both employees and approvers.

After resetting the policy, review the Details tab to make sure the settings are what you expect before continuing.